Moscow, Mar 18 (EFE).- Russian President Vladimir Putin won a landslide victory in the polls to earn a fifth term as the country’s leader, the country’s election commission said Monday.
Putin was re-elected until 2030, obtaining 87.32 percent of , with 99.36 percent of votes counted, the Central Election Commission said.
Communist candidate Nikolai Kharitonov came second with 4.32 percent of the vote, followed by the representative of New People, Vladislav Davankov who managed 3.79 percent of , while ultranationalist Leonid Slutsky came fourth with 3.19 percent.
After the preliminary results that gave him his biggest electoral victory since he came to power in 2000, Putin thanked Russians for their at the polls.
“First of all I want to thank the Russian citizens. We are all one team. All the citizens who went to the polling stations and voted,” said the head of the Kremlin.
Putin said that the high participation, the highest since 1991, is closely linked to the war in Ukraine.
“This is related to the fact that we are forced, in the literal sense of the word, to defend the interests of our citizens with weapons in hand,” he said.
The opposition to the Kremlin could not participate in the elections, since the commission did not its candidates, who ed peace in Ukraine, for various technical reasons and formal defects.
Thousands of Russian critics of the Kremlin came out at noon on Sunday to vote en masse in Russia and abroad in a show of opposition coordinated by the opposition against Putin’s policies and the war in Ukraine. EFE
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